Sociology Seminar: Thursdays

Time: 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm –
Date: 9th of Febuary 2023
Place: 3105

Marie Labussière (Université d’Amsterdam) – « Are occupations “bundles of skills” ? Identifying latent skill profiles in the labour market using topic modeling »

ZOOM – https://zoom.us/j/94531276518?pwd=R0NoS3hMbzVrRDkwSDdtU2UwWmdaUT09     Code secret : 699413/ ID de réunion : 945 3127 6518

Abstract : 

In the face of rapid technological change, a growing body of research has argued that the key determinant of employment growth is the nature of the tasks performed on the job and the extent to which they are complementary to IT devices. However, to make inferences about the task or skill content of jobs, previous studies often rely on standard occupational classifications, thereby implicitly assuming that occupations are made up of well-defined and homogenous “bundles of tasks”. In this article, we evaluate this assumption using a unique dataset of 60 million online job postings in the UK. Based on the skill requirements of job postings, we map the skill structure of the labor market and analyze its relationship to existing occupational classifications. Rather than assuming an a priori skill structure, we identify data-driven skill profiles in the job postings using topic modeling. Our preliminary results show that the labour market is segmented into coherent bundles of skills, but that these only partly overlap with occupations. Job postings within the same occupation can indeed demand different skill profiles, and the dispersion of job postings across the skill spectrum varies substantially from occupation to occupation. These results challenge the usefulness of occupations as proxies for skills and offer new perspectives for the analysis of labour market stratification.

Hadrien LE MER, Etienne OLLION, Patrick PRÄG (Pôle de Sociologie du CREST)
Sponsors :
CREST